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Written by Ana Sandoiu Published: Thursday 2 February 2017
Misleadingly marketed as a legal and safe alternative to marijuana, synthetic cannabinoids have a variety of adverse health effects. A new review summarizes the clinical cases that have so far been linked to the use of the synthetic substances.
A new review warns that so-called synthetic marijuana is actually very different from cannabis and is potentially unsafe.
Synthetic cannabinoids (SCBs) are a type of psychotropic chemical increasingly marketed as a safe and legal alternative to marijuana.
They are either sprayed onto dried plants so that they can be smoked, or they are sold as vaporizable and inhalable liquids.
A new review from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) warns against the dangerous side effects of the compounds popularly (and misleadingly) referred to as "synthetic marijuana."
Referring to the SCBs currently sold as "K2" and "Spice," Paul L. Prather, a cellular and molecular pharmacologist at UAMS and corresponding author of the review, explains the motivation behind it:
SCBs linked to serious adverse health effects and even death
As reported in the review, some of these effects suggest that SCBs cause much more toxicity than marijuana. Toxicity has been reported across a wide range of systems, including the gastrointestinal, neurological, cardiovascular, and renal systems.
The clinical cases documented in the review include acute and long-term symptoms, such as:
- Seizures
- Convulsions
- Catatonia
- Kidney injury
- Hypertension
- Chest pain
- Myocardial toxicity
- Ischemic stroke
Common adverse effects include prolonged and severe vomiting, anxiety, panic attacks, and irritability. Additionally, SCBs reportedly caused extreme psychosis in susceptible individuals, whereas marijuana only causes mild psychosis in those predisposed.
Furthermore, 20 deaths have been linked to SCBs between 2011 and 2014, whereas no deaths were reported among marijuana users during that time.
Finally, SCBs are likely to result in tolerance, dependence, and withdrawal.
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There is no such thing as a 'functional drug user'! Psychotropic substances mess with your brain and then your substance effected brain starts messing with you and then with others! Who pays the price for this? We all do.
Mass Intoxication with a Synthetic Cannabinoid
In July 2016, emergency services in Brooklyn responded to a scene of mass intoxication of 33 persons who had been exposed to an “herbal incense” product. How was the cause of their zombielike behavior identified? New research findings are summarized in a short video.
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The real cost of cocaine: Following the drug from Colombian rainforests to suburbia
‘There are some Londoners who think it is a victimless crime, taking cocaine at “middle-class parties”,’ Khan said. Dick criticised otherwise ethically minded users ‘who will sit round happily talking about global warming, fair trade, environmental protection and organic farming, but think there’s no harm in taking a bit of cocaine. Well, there is. There is misery throughout the supply chain.’
It’s a reasonable point. In an age when we put so much stock in consumer ethics, considering our footprint on the planet with every stride, why not investigate where your drugs come from, too?
If it ends with a snort, it begins with a seed…. In the first of a litany of environmental crimes occurring throughout the supply chain, the creation of clandestine farms means tearing down swathes of forest.
Rosie had no idea about its origins and doesn’t think about her complicity. She has two degrees, but thought cocaine came ‘from Cuba’ and was always ‘a powder… coming on a boat in the middle of the night’. She likes how coke makes her feel, but didn’t know about the environmental destruction, or cartel violence, or the risks taken by smugglers, or the bribes, or levamisole, or necrosis syndrome, or the young lives being ruined by county lines or lost in gang violence. (She did know about the Kinder eggs, but doesn’t seem very bothered.)
‘I had never really put too much thought into how it got here, just how I can get it,’ she says. And so the cocaine will keep on coming.
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Macquarie University researcher Shivani Sachdev has developed new tests to analyse synthetic cannabinoids and found some are up to 300 times more powerful than the cannabis plant…a group of drugs causing hundreds of deaths and hundreds of hospitalisations around the world.
“Synthetic drugs are cheap, potent and widely available – and they have become a dangerous epidemic, literally poisoning people all over the world,” says Sachdev.
“People have died from just a small dose of some of these synthetic cannabinoids, which act in very different ways to the plant and which are far more potent,” she says.
Sachdev’s research has compared the activity of more than 20 different synthetic cannabinoids to the psychoactive ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), found in the cannabis plant.
“This is the first research to quantify the strength of these compounds and what we found is very disturbing; some of these synthetic drugs were 300 times more powerful than cannabis.”
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The research, published Jan. 21 in JAMA Pediatrics, was conducted by the anti-tobacco advocacy group Truth Initiative.
"Youth tobacco use is at its highest in nearly 20 years, primarily driven by e-cigarettes resulting in over 5 million youth now vaping across America," Robin Koval, CEO and president of Truth Initiative, said in a news release.
"Years of progress in the fight against youth tobacco [use] have been reversed," Koval added, "with millions of teens, most of whom were not smokers, now using a high-nicotine tobacco product."